35 comments to How cool is this?

Without linking to each and every hyperlink, I have no idea what the piece actually said.
Apparently I can’t comprehend the British language as well as I thought.
Separated by “common” language I suppose.

Roy Greenslade is an academic as well as a Guardian (and BBC) creature – he represents a good example of all that is wrong with Western (not just British) culture.

I remember him quietly pushing the “Hacked Off” (that alliance of Reds and the vile old “not a Nazi” Max Moseley) line – and sneering at anyone (such as the editor of the Spectator) who resisted state control of the press.

Nor was the headline in the Daily Mail false – Ralph Miliband did hate Britain (and all other “capitalist” countries), he was a monster. And it was his son “Ed” Miliband who dragged this dead Marxist into the political debate – by declaring (in his comments as leader of the Labour party) that his father was his inspiration in politics.

As for the Daily Mail – how corporatist are they?

I do not know the newspaper well (I used to make a policy of avoiding it because of its anti Americanism), but it does seem to have doubts about the policy of ultra low interest rates and endless credit bubble finance.

It may be corporatist – but Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne are a lot worse.

Hmmm…lest there be a misunderstanding, I was referring to “all the links”, which I did NOT bother with,
in the guardian piece.

To me, the piece is the same as a plagiarized cut-and-paste college thesis, with Mad-Lib adjectives and adverbs tossed in to bring the word count up to minimum.
Alas, I suspect the habit is but one consequence of neo-journolistic “app” cheer leading, in no danger of supplanting “traditional” intellectual discourse.
Or Strunk and White for that matter.

Oddly enough the Daily Mail is one of the few newspapers where some doubts about the policy of near zero interest rates and endless demented schemes (such as the government help to buy houses) are sometimes expressed.

Considering that both the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis were “Keynesians before Keynes” (the absurd belief that producing more money means more wealth is ancient – it was not invented by Keynes), the Daily Mail should NOT be considered a “Fascist” newspaper – indeed the Guardian is closer to this.

However, I still do not like the anti Americanism and anti Israeli stance.

Paul Marks,
If you want to see fanatical anti-American and anti-Israeli feeling come to Sinny, during the Olympics when the Seppo team entered the arena the crowd erupted into a torrent of howling hatred while the Meeja constantly attacks America and Israel.

Disagree strongly with that Regional. I was in the stadium that night and the US got the third loudest cheer (cheer, not jeer is my memory) when they walked in. Loudest cheer was the Aussie team, second loudest was combined Korea (North and South walked in together).

Not ‘fascist’ but it should indeed be considered a corporatist authoritarian paper. It just panders to a different set of thugs than the Guardian does, so the fact they see the folly of near zero interest rates does not really win them all that many points with me.

ajf,
Your interpretation of events certainly didn’t reflect the look of shock on the American team faces. Australians have a pack mentality like that 14 year old girl at the Sydney Collingwood match led from the ground by the Rozzers and the crowd howled hate or the crowd at the AFL Grand Final howling hate at John Howard. Australians are a nasty vindictive nation.

I don’t agree with your characterisation of the Mail. It frequently attacks fat-cat state bureaucrats, police corruption and malfeasance etc, more so than most of the other papers I think. But please don’t categorise me as a fan.

The Mail does indeed do those things, Colonel Shotover, just as the Guardian is having its finest hour with the Snowden Affair. But that changes my views of these papers not one jot.

They both constantly argue for the state to ban this or that, they just pander to different prejudices. The Mail thinks panoptic surveillance is just peachy, for example. They hate corruption but think a vast intrusive state is just fine… just not a corrupt vast intrusive state… oh, well that’s ok then

“The Mail thinks panoptic surveillance is just peachy, for example.”
The Mail thinks nothing. The Mail, like all successful newspapers – and the Mail is a successful newspaper – reflects the opinions of its readers. It prints what sells. And as far as slugfests are concerned, the Guardian with its tiny circulation – reflecting how marginal its views are – is a lightweight. It’s only because it has the BBC as its publicly funded broadcasting arm, the fight gets any notice whatsoever.
If the Mail represents “thuggish authoritarian corporatist right-statism” then the country has a lot of thuggish authoritarian corporatist right-statists amongst its numbers. Rather than sneering at them, might’nt it be a better idea to ask why?

If the UK were divided in two, one half each run as an absolute State by these respective newspaper’s editors, which one would you wish to end up in, and in which might the State be a mortal hazard to you?

“…it is pretty damn obvious why they think what they think.”
Is it really? I suppose to the laughable self righteous intellectual it is. But Mail readers, en mass, don’t think anything in particular. You only have to read the paper to realise most of the positions it takes are self-contradictory. It’s against ‘big government’. Except when “something must be done”. It’s against big business. Unless it’s supporting it. It’s against youngsters discovering sex. Unless they’re 17yo bimbos pictured barely covered by swimwear. It doesn’t much like immigrants unless they win Olympic medals. It criticises ‘benefit scroungers’ but is always ready to stand up for the little guy denied his ‘rights’ by the system. It reflects the totally confused general public in all its diversity.
You see it as the opposite of the Guardian. It isn’t the opposite of anything. The Guardian is for people who know exactly what they think, know that’s the only possible way a person should think & are determined everyone should think the same. The Mail’s an argument in newsprint. Something for everyone. That’s why it’s popular.

Actually the leading figures of the Frankfurt School such as Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, were broadly sympathetic to Zionism.
For instance Adorno and Horkheimer wrote:

‘The fact that people have discovered humanity when faced by a fascist chieftain like Nasser who conspires with Moscow; that, as in Hitler’s time, they show greater concern about breaking treaties than about the treaties themselves and their sanctity; and that no one even ventures to point out that these Arab robber states have been on the lookout for years for an opportunity to fall upon Israel and to slaughter the Jews who have found refuge there – all this is a symptom of public consciousness that has to be taken very seriously indeed. The hypocrisy … in almost every camp is proof of a confusion of thought that bodes ill for the future’

Fact is the Daily Mail supported Adolf Hitler, so it is a fact of historical record that it is fascist, much as Mr Dacre and Pipsqueak Rothermere try to cover this up.
Then there’s the “hasn’t she grown!” articles which often feature a picture of an underage girl in a bikini, and the “sidebar of shame”, all from a newspaper that preaches “morality”, the kind of curtain twitching morality and prurience which seem unique to Britain.
Let’s also remember Paul Dacre’s illustrious father, the heroic Peter Dacre, who bravely dodged the draft with the aid of posh buddies so he could spend the second world war writing showbiz gossip, not like that evil Ralph Milliband who went out and fought for Britain. Peter Dacre bravely ran away, like Sir Robin, a trait inherited by his son, who bravely runs away when challenged.

Meanwhile, the treasonous, cancerous pustule Lord Rothermere was Hitler’s best buddy, “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!” he declared. Given that the Rothermere’s have never apologized for their vile beliefs, its fair to assume they are still very much present in the current pipsqueak Rothermere.

Thus, we have the Mail, a newspaper which hilariously preaches freedom of speech while campaigning to “BAN THIS FILTH!”“BAN VIOLENT GAMES!”“BAN VIOLENT OR SEXY TV SHOWS!”, and which sides with parasitic scumbags of GCHQ, the Mail actively supporting the increase of state power to spy on you and restrict your rights. The Mail, which advocates pumping up house prices to feed the pockets of its greedy, lazy readership.

All newspapers are written for idiots, but the Guardian at least has two of the best cartoonists in the UK (Steve Bell and Martin Rowson), and is not filled with showbiz tat.
Broadly speaking, the Daily Mail appeals to moronic, hypocritical Baby Boomers (the generation that has no right to lecture anyone on morality) and bigoted old rinses. It’s the paper for people who hate anyone who isn’t like them.

BTW Doubts about the Help to Buy scheme have been raised everywhere. The Mail practically has an orgasm when house prices rise. The policy is clearly designed to fatten the wallets of bankers and Boomers at the expense of the everyone else. Why should taxpayers struggling to get buy on £100-£200 a week fund a scheme which will not benefit them at all?

Pardone, you fail to mention Lord Rothermere and the Blenheim bomber, hardly support for Hitler, at least Rothermere made a gesture, and I doubt that Miliband senior had much choice on joining the Belgian section of the Royal Navy, although he was right about the appalling divisions in the Navy, his observations echoed 40 years later by Jerry Pook.

Rothermere was wholly wrong on the Blackshirts, and in his idiotic support for the Nazis, but at least he did campaign against government spending.

Would I be wrong to detect a whiff of snobbery on your dislike of the Daily Mail? The kind of snobbery one might expect to see in Guardian readers. Your position seems very ad hominem.

Astonishing rosenquist – you have found something written by Adorno and Horkheimer that I actually agree with.

Nasser (and the rest of the “Arab Socialists”) were robbers, and they were in league with the Soviet Union, and they did wish to wipe Israel off the map driving the Jews into the sea.

I agree with [almost – more later on where I differ] every word that Adorno and Horkeimer write in your quote – athough I think the next think the next generation of “Critical Theory” “anti Imperialist” types (such as Edward Said – one of the mentors of Barack Obama) would not.

This is the “joke”.

The average Western academic “Critical Theory” Marxist, with his Palestinian flag on the wall of his office, and his (or her) desire to wipe “Imperialist” “Colonist” Israel off the map, is part of a movement that was founded by Jews.

Jews have a history of founding anti-Semitic movements.

One of the ironies of history.

By the way – see how A and H can not bring themselves to call Nasser a SOCIALIST (which he was – a dedicated one).

So they use the word “Fascist” instead.

I doubt they ever managed to call Syrian and Iraqi socialists SOCIALISTS either.

Had they been intellectually honest (had they called socialists socialists) they would have had to question their own socialism.

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